To the Ground

I am not a psychologist or physician, nor is this sermon meant to take the place of professional help. If you are having difficulties or concerns please get help. Contact a mental health or medical professional. The mental health crisis line is 719-635-7000. If you are thinking of hurting yourself or someone else, please call 911. Help is available.

“To the Ground”

Two broad areas to think about this week: psychology and theology—for me there often isn't much difference. I've got a strong utilitarian slant to my spirituality. I want to know and share practical ways to improve our lives and the world around us. And I happily draw from any tradition or science that meets those needs. And this has been a week that I feel calls for a certain clear practicality—how do I manage during high-stress times when I am mostly out of control?

I've been asked a lot this week “how do people cope with this kind of crisis, this sort of stress?” Of course, there is no one answer. Each of us is a blend of a genetic inheritance, our past, our present circumstances, and our expectations of the future. We are all embedded in complex webs of relationship that can strengthen or weaken us—and oft-times, both, depending on the moment. How we handle difficulty is unique to the individual and the particular family system of which you are a part. Still, there common human elements that we look to, while respecting the singularity of the individual soul and psyche—which is another way of saying, what I say may or may not apply to you—it's really not all that unlike our overall approach to spirituality—celebrate what we share, honor what is unique. And I think this is important as a faith community. We don't need to have identical answers to find comfort here. I sometimes hear us lament our lack of shared theology or specificity of faith. And, no doubt, during hard times, having an overarching theology can be comforting, but generally it's not who we are. Our values are based in our shared humanity, not shared mythology. And so, during times of crisis we don't tend to turn to supernatural sources of comfort, we turn to each other. Facebook is fun, email is convenient, but nothing can really replace putting a reassuring hand on your friend's shoulder, looking into their eyes and seeing your own worries reflected even as you listen carefully to their story, getting and giving handshakes and hugs. Don't mistake being connected for connection.

I've been interviewed for television a couple of times this week, a new experience for me, and if you want to talk about stress, try being a ragingly liberal Unitarian Universalist minister talking to Fox News. I know it's just the local affiliate, but I kept waiting for them to ask me if I saw the president set the fire myself or just saw Hillary driving the get-away car. Luckily, all they wanted me to talk about was the warning signs and what people can expect to experience under these circumstances. I understand the intent, but I'm also not real keen on setting out long lists of symptoms people may experience when under high stress---I think it mostly predisposes people to start having those symptoms, and, as the son of an Olympic-level hypochondriac, and I myself have placed in nationals twice, I can tell you that folks who think they should be suffering, all too often suffer.

You and your loved ones will know if you're having trouble. Other than thoughts of harm to self or others, give yourself some time. If you're having problems that affect the quality of your life and aren't getting progressively better or are worsening, seek professional help. If you want to know if what you’re experiencing is “normal” talk to me or your primary care provider or a counselor.

In the past few days, speaking with you at Shirley Plapp's memorial or at our Friday pizza gathering, I heard a few themes that need addressing.

First I heard several people say that they don't know why they felt stressed. Other than a little smoke and staying with friends for a few days, there wasn't any real damage done to their lives. In other words, all's well that end's well and so I shouldn't feel stressed. That is like saying if you started at 6000 feet, ran to the top of the Peak at 14,000 ft, and then ran back down, you shouldn't feel tired or sore because the total elevation gain was zero. Yes, your house may still be there, and you recognize that things are fundamentally OK, but that doesn't mean you didn't do a lot of work between then and now. Stress impact isn't measured in a linear equation that just needs to end up at zero at the end of the day. Stress is more like mileage on a car---you may come back to exactly where you started after a long road trip, but the wear and tear still happened to the vehicle. And now you may need to do some repairs and preventative maintenance.

I'm also hearing some “survivor's guilt”--which is a normal reaction. When chance seems in control of whose home is destroyed or preserved, our minds and hearts struggle with the why's and wherefore's. Human beings don't tend to do well with blind luck—we are pattern-creating, pattern-perceiving, pattern-hungry creatures. And yet, the fire, or other tragedies, rarely if ever have any perceptible pattern. Lasting, disruptive feelings of guilt are part of post-traumatic stress issues and counseling can help. Folks sometimes regret not thinking clearly enough to help others, for example. A couple things to remember about times of true crisis—our fight or flight instincts are incredibly strong and very literally shut down the part of your brain concerned with sophisticated thinking. Evolution had very little interest in you pondering the subtleties of sabre-tooth tiger biology when under attack---all evolution wants is to get you and, more importantly, your genetic material, out of harm's way...now. Blake's famous poem that begins “Tyger, tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night” was not written while the tiger was in mid-pounce. Remember that being injured or having your home destroyed would help no one else. And no one who cares about you wishes your home was damaged as a way to make them feel better about their own loss. It's not your fault someone's home was destroyed anymore than you did anything special to merit your good fortune.

Your own stress doesn't have to be compared to someone else's to see if it is worthy. Accept your own feelings. One thing I can pretty much guarantee is that our perception of how “together” someone else is, is almost always wrong---internal experience and external expression are radically different.

My best advice is really, deeply, honestly acknowledge the pain and fear of these events. Even if your home was not damaged or destroyed, being forced to leave it in a rush, unsure if you grabbed what you needed, unsure if you'd see it again, if you were physically safe, if friends were OK, the smoke that turned day into night and the flames at your back---sounds pretty stressful to me. Sit down with a friend, here or elsewhere, try to relax your body, know that you are safe in the moment, and just tell your story. Our lives are stories we tell ourselves and others—every event in our life has to be integrated with our narrative—when we don't, when we are so traumatized by painful or frightening events that we refuse to acknowledge and incorporate them, our minds can keep those memories active—waiting to be integrated. Active memories of high stress events can persist—causing things like flashbacks or nightmares. These un-integrated memories retain their power and so keep stimulating that fight or flight reaction—and so we stay keyed up, anxious, unsettled. You don't have to like what happened and I'm not saying you need to come to some rosy, “I'm a better person now” resolution, you don't have to like it, but you do you need to accept it—and in doing so let those memories integrate and then lose their power over you. This is true of this fire or most other traumatic events.

I want to take a few moments to go over something I talked about last time I was up here. In a nutshell, our autonomic nervous system has two opposing modes—sympathetic or parasympathetic. Sympathetic dominance basically means fight-or-flight and stress. Great for escaping from a tiger, burning brightly or otherwise, but not good for day to day living. The other side, the parasympathetic is the rest-and-digest mode. This is where we really should be most of the time. Unfortunately we perceive way too much of daily life as a threat and so we tend to live sympathetically dominant and over-stimulated. Without going into much detail, there are a couple quick ways you can shift yourself toward parasympathetic dominance and so, essentially, force your body to relax. And it is all but impossible to be stressed feeling or traumatized if you have a relaxed body. So, let's do what we did last time. First, let your gaze open up—expand your peripheral vision—sympathetic vision is narrow, tight; parasympathetic is relaxed and open. Hold that for 30 seconds or so and you basically force your body into that rest-and-digest mode. The other, very powerful, technique involves, yep you remember, sitting on your hands. Find your sit-bones, then find the tops of your hips. Close your eyes, make a square or rectangle out of those four points, now expand that square, breathe and just see it growing, expanding. Feel the muscles in your lower abdomen and pelvis relax. You're taking the pressure off the inferior portion of the vagus nerve which is part of what controls the autonomic nervous system. When those muscles are relaxed, you can't be physically stressed—and your mind will follow. You may still be afraid, or worried, but you won't have the negative effects of physiological stress and you'll gain the benefits of being parasympathetically dominant—calmer clear thinking, lowered pulse, deeper breathing, and reduced muscular tension. Learn to monitor your stress level and use these techniques to shove you back into balance—and you can learn to do it pretty automatically.

I haven't said much about children, the main thing they need is be reassured that they are safe, that adults in their life are in control, and to have sense of routine. Help them express themselves as well—art projects can be a great way to see what's going on in those little heads. Like adults, they need to be heard in their worries, process, and feel connected and reassured. It's not unusual for kids to act out a bit, regress developmentally a bit, or be extra clingy under high stress. Their resources are far more limited than adults’—this even goes for teens who often feel out of control anyway even if they can't name it as such. Make extra time for your children—your attention is the most important thing to them. Their world changes so rapidly as they develop that they really need a stable container in which they can grow—and crisis shakes that up pretty hard.

And that brings to a close the psycho-babble portion of our program—on to theology.

So, not the best week ever for the Springs. How do we think about this spiritually? Merle graciously wrote the order of service, so I didn't need a title for my sermon, but as I visited with many of you at Shirley's memorial service, as I sat with hospital staff who have lost their homes, watched the constantly-on television in the incident command room at Memorial, listened to KRCC, a phrase kept entering my mind: "To the ground." People I know, colleagues at work, members of this congregation, have had their homes burned to the ground.

I teach classes on end of life at the hospital and in the community. One thing I tell my students is that it is OK, important even, to use the "D" word. Don't say "lost," don't say "passed away." Say "dying," "died," "dead." I can see their reticence, their worry that to speak too plainly causes more harm, as if the euphemisms and circumlocutions somehow take the sting out of death--but, of course, no artful turn of language provides any lasting balm against loss. So when I think about what so many in our broader community have endured, what some of our dear ones right here have come home to, I don't want to minimize it by saying "lost in the fire" as if, once the smoke clears, these structures might be found again. Our friends’ and neighbors’ houses have been, in many cases, burned to the ground. Burned to the ground often with decades of the happy flotsam and jetsam of a full life now gone.

“To the ground” sounds harsh, but I began to realize why those three words did not feel entirely devastating to me. When I think of "to the ground" two others explications—both spiritual in nature---come to mind.

First is the ground itself, this wonderful earth that we float about on--our Blue Boat Home. While the human cost of this fire has been both staggeringly large and small at the same time---lots of homes damaged or destroyed, so few dead or injured—the cost to the earth comes to mind, and again how staggeringly large and small at the same time. I hurt for the landscape that I love so much—and I'm afraid of what our beautiful mountains will look like when the fire is gone and all that's left is blackened ground. But our planet has recovered from so much worse—and will recover from this. Life always has and always will arise out of death—there is no other way. The death of stars created the atoms that make us up, our own existence is built on generations of death, and we ourselves will eventually make room for those to come. New life will come to our mountains, indeed renewed by the destruction we've witnessed. What can be reborn out of our own ashes, the losses we endure physically, emotionally, or spiritually? All change involves loss—sometimes the cost is light, sometimes it is much higher and not chosen.

But we always have the ability to respond to our life, we always have the ability to choose how we respond to the events of our lives. Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl based an influential school of psychology on this very premise—and he suffered tremendously at the hands of the Nazi's, far worse, I dare say, than any of us did this week. He writes of this revelation:

We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles... The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. ...Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. ...

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.”

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

And Frankl's words brings me to the final point. The second perspective that comes to me when I say to myself "to the ground" is even more explicitly theological. I think of going “to the ground” of being, what some call "God" or "Goddess" and I tend to simply think of as “Mystery.” The underlying, supportive mystery from which we ourselves, the earth, our fellow animals, the weather and even the fire itself all arise and participate. So, without any intention of being flip, when our houses, literally or figuratively have been burned to the ground, how do we return to the ground of life, of being. And, as we began, so we end. There is no one answer. How do you feel connected to the deep mystery of life? What intentional work have you done, will you do, to remind yourself that at the deepest level, no matter what happens to you, you are a beautiful, integral, necessary part of this heart-breakingly exquisite intricate existence? One answer that I do believe is universal is Love—the way we connect to the ground of being is through giving and receiving love. So give the love and help you can, ask for the love and help you need. Find connection, even in the midst of the smoke and the dark, especially when things seem worst, reach out for and in love. Blessings to us all.